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What is a Medical Services Center?

Tricia Christensen
Tricia Christensen
Tricia Christensen
Tricia Christensen

A medical services center doesn’t have a single agreed upon definition. It may be used to describe a hospital that offers a variety of services. Sometimes each specialty practice in the hospitals is its own “service.” Alternately, it’s sometimes employed to describe a large medical facility that provides many related services.

In the first definition, plenty of hospitals might qualify under the term medical services center if they offer different types of medical care. A hospital that has an obstetrics department delivers babies, and they might have an emergency room, offering a very different kind of service to the community. Sometimes specialists practice in the same medical services center, and patients wanting to seem them would head to the group of buildings the center owns, or perhaps some wing of the hospital. Other services a hospital might offer include critical care, rehabilitation, and patient education seminars.

A medical services center has an emergency department.
A medical services center has an emergency department.

In the most technically advanced hospitals, which usually have a medical school attached to them and are called tertiary hospitals, number of specialists is exceptionally high. Each specialist group may be called a service, which is provided to the hospital, and which that hospital provides to patients. In these settings, people may visit a large medical services center for specialists and to be treated by specialists in the hospital.

For instance, surgery for a newborn with heart defects would involve pediatric cardiology and pediatric cardiothoracic surgery services, who may or may not have a great deal of interaction with each other (in the best hospitals they must so care is streamlined). These specialists groups working within the hospital are generally separate from each other, though more than one specialty group can be involved in a single case. Each group may have its own organizational structure too, though they are all part of the medical services center.

A somewhat related definition of medical services center could be large groups of specialists that might practice together to provide similar things. The term could be used to describe large dermatological, plastic surgery and aesthetician groups that would offer cosmetic surgery and cosmetic procedures. A person needing or desiring any fix to the face, from a facial to microdermabrasion to a face lift, might head to one of these centers for one-stop beauty shopping.

These definitions all have in common the idea of collecting a group of medical services together in a single location. This is perhaps how medical services center can best be understood. By putting all the services under one roof (or a few roofs next to each other), patients may find it more convenient.

Tricia Christensen
Tricia Christensen

Tricia has a Literature degree from Sonoma State University and has been a frequent WiseGEEK contributor for many years. She is especially passionate about reading and writing, although her other interests include medicine, art, film, history, politics, ethics, and religion. Tricia lives in Northern California and is currently working on her first novel.

Learn more...
Tricia Christensen
Tricia Christensen

Tricia has a Literature degree from Sonoma State University and has been a frequent WiseGEEK contributor for many years. She is especially passionate about reading and writing, although her other interests include medicine, art, film, history, politics, ethics, and religion. Tricia lives in Northern California and is currently working on her first novel.

Learn more...

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    • A medical services center has an emergency department.
      By: EyeMark
      A medical services center has an emergency department.